Presidential Internet Kill Switch May Still be Alive

Presidential Internet Kill Switch May Still be Alive

www.eweek.com

Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe originally introduced the Cybersecurity Bill of 2009 to howls of protest over a provision in the legislation that would give the president the unprecedented authority to shut down the Internet for national security reasons. Rockefeller and Snowe retreated and redrafted but still left the issue much in doubt.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Well... ya gotta love that.

The question is... although one could come up with a scenario where this would be a detriment to the people (i.e. Iran's election recently). You can also come up with all sorts of scenarios where it could be used positively.

The issue at hand though is that, would such a switch shut down the internet altogether, or simply Isolate the US Internet from the rest of the world. What kind of mass hysteria would ensue simply from shutting it down?

At the end of the day, I fall on the side that says no to an internet kill switch.


www.eweek.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
At the end of the day, I fall on the side that says no to an internet kill switch.

Well, I have to agree with you there.

I don't know who would think this is a good idea or what positive situations you mean could come of it?

As far as I am concerned, the internet is our greatest weapon against the NWO. They know that now, they have seen in the last few years, the last decade and a half, what the internet is, how powerful it is.

They will take it from us as soon as they possibly can.

BTW dude you go through avatars fast lol

[edit on 22-9-2009 by BaronVonGodzilla]

I don't think it's actually possible to "shut down the Internet". Considering it is a large network of connected computers I would think that the best they could hope for is firewalling the US off from the rest of the world and shutting down the backbone connections which would only really succeed in interrupting the Internet within the US - and probably not all that much at that.

[edit on 22/9/2009 by Kryties]

Dear dear, these guys really didn't get their tech briefings that morning, did they? Or did they come from the guy who thought the internet was a series of tubes?

You can't just turn off the internet, its not possible, it is a physical impossibility unless you are going to EMP most of the USA to knock out the datacenters. You're talking about a network that piggybacks on every existing physical network in existence, right down to the electrical grid itself (You can get modems for electrical internet connections, just plug into a wall socket and go).

I mean, sure you could try and tailor a killswitch virus that percolates throughout the 'net over a period of a couple of decades, but by the time you wanted to throw it it would be too out of date to even effect things.

These are the people in charge of deciding internet policy? No wonder broadband is so far behind in North America.

i say no. This is about control and power. Do we want the President to hold the life switch of the internet-internet business($), communications, censorship, Knowledge, modern day life ? No.Seems like something a dictator would want.Doesn't it seem like a dictatorship with alternating presidents.

reply to post by A por uvas

This is about control and power. Do we want the President to hold the life switch of the internet-internet business($), communications, censorship, Knowledge, modern day life ?

This is what Obama dreams about!

Originally posted by Kryties
I don't think it's actually possible to "shut down the Internet". Considering it is a large network of connected computers I would think that the best they could hope for is firewalling the US off from the rest of the world and shutting down the backbone connections which would only really succeed in interrupting the Internet within the US - and probably not all that much at that.

[edit on 22/9/2009 by Kryties]

I was thinking the same thing .


Until i saw this .........

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ecf22041487a.jpg[/atsimg]

I wonder if the words presidential and kill set off any red flags in the title of this post?

Right now if you shut down the internet the US power grid would go down along with the banking system.

All the large wind turbines in the US are run over the internet and many of the power plants. Manual control would cause brownout overloads or blackout because the system needs the internet to tell it what the load conditions are at any time.

Your local ATM is most likely run over the internet.

Industry runs on the internet for moving documents and shipping orders and sales.


The only thing a internet kill switch would be good for is to isolate the US from hostile actions by other countries by breaking THERE internet connections with the US.
And that would only be partiality successful as the can reroute through countries that are friendly to us.
Or even feed our internet through sleeper agents inside the US.

only people that do not understand the internet believe that a kill switch will work.

just ask any one that works in industry, sales, shipping. OR AS a Corporate IT what would happen if the internet went down. and if there companies have a system to operate without the internet. most do not.


[edit on 22-9-2009 by ANNED]

I could envision a scenario that would more or less effectively shut down the Internet. It would require cooperation with the root name servers though and services that are essential to national security would have to be in some database somewhere. Root name servers are the servers that provide DNS data (link a domain name to an IP address) of authoritative name servers and they could reroute all non-essential services to some arbitrary website like whitehouse.gov. Basically if you tried to go to any website that wasn't necessary to national security you could be sent to a website where they could fill you in on whatever details they thought were necessary for the public to know. This probably wouldn't shut down everyone immediately. It would take at least a few days while the new information was propagated to the secondary and remaining name servers. If they had cooperation with ISP's they could get this information updated faster.

If you knew the IP address of websites though you could still have some limited access to the Internet. Not all sites will allow you to visit using IP addresses, though it is possible in some cases.

The hacking community is gunning for it, theres BIG money to be made if you can make the magic happen.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


I would assume it would be to isolate the US from the rest of the Internet.

If they tried to shut down the net globally, they would be interfering with other nations telecommunications networks, and thus committing an act of war.

Can you imagine America shutting down the Internet for China or Russia?
Would start a serious and possibly deadly confrontation.

There really is no point in a 'kill switch' for the net, other then to control information sharing and spreading.
For instance they say terrorists(the current favourite boogeyman to scare the populace with) can use the Internet to shut down the US power grid, attack financial institutions, hack airport systems and cause chaos etc.
Well what good would a kill switch be, if it can't stop such an attack?

They are better off investing in actually securing the telecommunications networks, but they know that. Doing that though wont give them total control over the sharing and spreading of information.
They recognise the fact that the Internet can and will be used as a means to spread word, to gather people for protests and resistance, etc.

Like they can't shut it down already if they wanted to. People are kidding them selves if they think something like the Internet, designed for military use initially, has been allowed to go public, without them having the ability to control it if they wanted to.

These laws they try pass are just aimed at making it easier, with no oversight or need to answer or justify doing it, because it will be pre-determined that it is in the name of national security.

Originally posted by ANNED
Right now if you shut down the internet the US power grid would go down along with the banking system.

Yes to the banking system... no to the power grid. Although the power grid does use networks, those networks are private leased lines.